with them,” she says. Clients provide input
for a new product or solution during the
initial design, and along the way they test
prototypes and pilot offerings to make
sure that, from a client’s perspective, Citi
is ticking off all the right boxes.

Marrying innovation and diversity

Project goals that are simply stated,
however, are not so simple to execute.
“There was a lot of heavy lifting,” says
Chaturvedi. “Managing the product
development also required having the
courage and conviction to advocate for
the clients and cross-functional team’s
ultimate goals, particularly because the
solution is so transformative.”
The project’s extended team spans four
geographic regions and seven different
functional areas, including operations,
technology, customer service and
payment products.

Chaturvedi urged members to look beyond
any perceived constraints in the company’s
existing platform and processes to make
the solution simple for clients. They had
to overcome the temptation to take a
tactical approach or come up with a
temporary quick fix. Instead, the team
rallied behind a more strategic, zero-based
planning approach and next-generation-architecture mindset, where the merger of
diversity and innovation really paid off.

To achieve this, Pat Koshek, leveraged
her experience to ensure the best project
management/user testing teams were
in place. “By proactively identifying and
addressing project issues and risks, we
were able to deliver code that met our
clients’ needs.” says Koshek.

“Diversity of mindset, experiences and
expertise … people brought all of that to
the table,” says Davis. “During ideation
and design-thinking sessions all of that
richness got built right into the end-state
solution,” she adds.

The result was a roadmap for marrying
changes happening around financial
markets infrastructures with TTS’s
own payments technology capabilities.
“The solution is really forward-thinking
and features three key technology
components,” says Ireti Samuel-Ogbu,
who as TTS’s Head of Payments and
Receivables in EMEA brought a sense of
urgency to the project.

They include: 1) using big data technology
to power and enrich payments
information that is delivered to TTS’s
clients real-time across Citi’s global
network, 2) leveraging the shift from
batch to real-time payment processing,
and 3) integrating into the Citi platform
new, end-to-end international payment
tracking capabilities from a financial
messaging provider.

From a big data perspective, a key
challenge was bringing together a lot of
different data elements in an intelligent
way to provide real-time information on a
global basis in a way customers can use
it and act on it.

Now, clients can, for example, validate if
and when beneficiaries of cross-border
payments receive their payments.
They can also take actions like return a
payment they don’t recognize or granting
debit authority when a remitter requests
recall on a payment without calling or
emailing a service representative.

That’s a major step forward innovation-wise and in terms of digitizing the client
experience.

Power in diversity

Reflecting on the efforts of the multi-faceted team that moved the solution
forward, Samuel-Ogbu said, “We want to
be a bank that provides innovation and
keeps changing with the times. To do this
we have to draw from diverse teams … a
diverse pool of ideas and talent.”
Fellow team leader Peterson adds: “What
really helps a project such as this to be
successful is fully engaging clients in the
process and also embracing diversity of
thought, really listening to everyone’s
perspectives and opinions and, from
there, making the right decisions and
putting them into action.”

Preeti Chaturvedi

Citi Product Manager

Global Payments
and Receivables

Sandra Peterson

Global Head of Service

Innovation and
Readiness

Lisa Davis

Global Head

Enterprise Services

Pat Koshek

Client Operations Global
Infrastructure Head

Ireti Samuel-Ogbu
TTS Head of Payments
and Receivables

EMEA

“The solution is a perfect
example of how an agile
innovation process can be used
to unleash the power of our
global banking platform, big
data capabilities, and payment
services to deliver an entirely
new experience to our clients,”

—Tapodyuti Bose, TTS’s Global Head
of Channel and Enterprise Services.